Monthly Archives: December 2011

Stupid computer

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Got to work this morning and half of the programs on my laptop had decided to stop working.  Took me nearly three hours to get things straightened out.  

Grrrr.

I did, however, manage to move the Frowsy Noise blog so that it no appears under my regular TWD profile.  Logging out of one gmail account and into another every time I wanted to update one blog or another was getting really old really fast.  After 5 days in existence, however, frowsynoise@gmail.com no longer exists.

Think it’s about time for me to go eat lunch.  Decisions, decisions….

TWD

moonshine

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Whoa.  Almost forgot to get an update in today.

I didn’t realize it was the 6th today until I checked my bank balances (it’s a habit) and noticed that I’d been paid.  That was a nice surprise to start the day, particularly given the fact that I got my car registration renewal in the mail yesterday.

I know I’ve mentioned how much I hate December from a financial standpoint before….

Worked from home today – did a couple of ad hoc reports and a bit of directory shuffling (part of my group’s December housekeeping project).  Around 5:30, I headed down to the Salvation Army to catalog some more of the band’s music before rehearsal.  Slowly working my way through 5 file cabinets of the stuff.  I’ve got three drawers left to catalog and then I can devote some serious time to building the online library that will help us keep track of everything.  My hope is that I can use the week after Christmas to do that (I’m on vacation that week).

So.  Moonshine.

I’ve been fascinated by the evil libation for a long time.  Not sure if it started before or after we moved from Vermont to South Carolina in 1980, though I’m sure that the move added to whatever interest I had previously because the town that we moved to (Travelers Rest, SC) is right on the edge of SC’s “Dark Corner” – a corner of the state that has a long (and continuing) history of moonshine.  I know that I was a junior in high school (1982) the first time I actually tasted the stuff.  My friend Jon Smith produced a couple of mason jars of it one evening when I was at his house – probably playing Pole Position on his Colecovision.  We had Pole Position marathons that year, during which we’d play the game for about 6 hours at a time.  I think that, were I to sit down at a game console that had Pole Position today, I’d still be able to roll the score about 12 times.

But back to the shine.  Jon had two different types of it – both manufactured by someone in his extended family – and I quickly learned a very important fact about moonshine.  It comes in (basically) two flavors.  One tastes like kerosene and the other tastes like sugar water.  Sure, you can add stuff to it to make it pretend to have other flavors.  Some people that I know today add peaches to it.  Some run it through burned wood chips to mellow it and give it a taste somewhat like bourbon (actually very good).  I’ve been told that running it through charcoal is not uncommon.  But – bottom line – it’s either going to taste like kerosene or it’s going to taste like sugar water.  And the most important lesson I learned hanging out with Jon – a lesson that has been relearned a few times since then – it this:  Stay the hell away from the sugar water moonshine.  It might taste harmless, but it can wipe out a weekend really quickly.  The kerosene stuff, by virtue of its taste, forces you to drink it in extreme moderation (not that it can’t also wipe out a weekend if you’re really determined).

The inebriation factor, however, is not what intrigues me about shine.  Fact is, I can go to a liquor store and get whiskey or bourbon that tastes a lot better for a lot cheaper (and there’s that whole “it’s legal” argument, too).  Moonshine, though, has so much history and adventure associated with it.  It’s been around since before the US was a country.  It was the direct cause of one of the first major challenges to George Washington’s presidency.  It was/is one of the defining characteristics of an entire class of people (hillbillies, mountain men…call them what you will).  It’s distribution system gave rise to the most-watched sporting events in America today (NASCAR).  It can be (and has been) argued that it is a symbol of the “true American spirit:” that attitude that says, “I am free and the government will not infringe upon my freedom.”

So it’s got all that going for it.  The adventure.  The mystique.  The romance.  It’s also got chemistry, and that’s the thing about it that really mesmerizes me.  The idea that some illiterate hick in the middle of a forest can figure out the distillation process – coupled with the fact that I don’t understand it at all – really draws me to the whole operation.  How did somebody figure out that sugar, corn, water and yeast could be heated and cooled in such as way that the end result would be liquor?  And how do those illiterate hicks in the woods manage to control the temperatures and timing to such an extent that they not only make liquor, but also make damned good liquor (in many cases)?

So I want to make some.  Note that I didn’t say, “I want to be a moonshiner.”  I don’t want to run some illicit still out in the middle of the Cohutta Wilderness, distill 500 gallons of shine, lead the revenuers on a 100-mile chase at midnight, and sell mason jars of “Tom;s Tonsil Tickler” for $5 a pop.  I just want to understand the distillation process by – hell, I don’t know – by making a jar of the stuff in my bathtub.

I had a co-worker a few years ago who was licensed to do just that (apparently, you can pay a fee and legally make x-gallons per year for personal consumption), but I don’t want to go to all that trouble (and probably end up on a terrorist watch list) just to experiment.  Maybe I’ll just google the process and see what I can come up with.

I’m obviously not the only person who is enchanted by the whole moonshine experience, by the way.  The thing that made me think of it tonight was the occurrence of my stumbling upon a new series on The Discovery Channel: The Moonshiners.

TWD

well…that was interesting

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I had a lucid dream last night.

I’m fairly certain that this was a first for me, though I’ve tried to have lucidity on and off for years.  Basically, a lucid dream is one that, while you’re having it, you know that you’re dreaming.  The theory goes that, if you’re aware that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming, then you can make just about anything happen in your dream.  You can try to solve problems or experience things that you want to experience (like flying, etc)….or you can tell yourself to knock it off.

I was able to do the last two things on that list last night, and I’ve got to admit that it was pretty cool.  Here’s what happened:

I went to bed fairly early last night and woke up at about 1:00 this morning.  Had a pee and watched a bit of television before attempting to go back to sleep around 2:00.  At some point between then and 6:00, I began dreaming that I was house-sitting for Cy and “T” at their large Victorian house.  I was also charged with taking care of their dog, a black lab named Snots.

Please note that Cy and “T” have neither a black lab nor a large Victorian house.  Those two facts figure into things later.

In my dream, I awoke from napping at their house and realized that I had no idea where Snots was.  I couldn’t remember having seen him for a week, and Cy and “T” were due home the following day.  Alarmed by this, I got out of bed (in my dream) and attempted to find my way from one end of the house to the other, but got hopelessly lost and kept winding up back in the bed where I had been sleeping.  So I went back to sleep (in my dream) and – some time later – woke up (still in the dream) and once again tried to find my way to the other end of the house.  This happened several times and I got more agitated each time, but I finally ended up outside the house and I began frantically to look for Snots.   It was drizzly and cold outside and the ground was slick.  This didn’t feel good at all, as I was dressed only in a bathrobe – no shoes.

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but I ended up standing on the top of a curved metal building (think of a knight’s helmet the size of a conference center) and I was having a great deal of trouble getting down, which is not surprising because the only way down was along a curved strip of metal, much like a slide on a playground; and did I mention that I was now carrying a large silver sousaphone? Don’t ask me where THAT came from – probably from the same place that the shirt, pants, and shoes that I was now wearing did.  In the drizzle, all of the clothes were soaking wet.

But I had to find the dog, and I knew that I couldn’t drop the sousaphone, and the only way off of this building was to slide down the slide (standing up), so I very carefully did so.  And I made it all the way to the ground and started walking back towards the house.  Unfortunately, there was a lot of water on the ground between the house and me, and footing was treacherous.

And at just about that point in the dream, I thought to myself, “Wait a minute.  Where’d this sousaphone come from?  And where’d these clothes come from?  And since when do Cy and “T” live in a house like that and have a black lab named Snots?  This has got to be a dream.  I’m freaking dreaming here!”

Right on the heels of that thought, I came up with two more: If I were dreaming, I could change the color of the sousaphone from silver to red; and I should be able to just sort of water-ski back to the house if I wanted to.

Guess what?  The formerly silver sousaphone turned into a red fiberglass one, and I managed to propel my way along the stream in front of me with no effort at all.  It was fun.

I was still relatively frazzled, however.  Sort of a dream-hangover from the previous attempts to find Snots and not knowing how to get out of the house and being stuck on the roof, I guess.  So I told myself to wake up and determined that the best way to do that would be to shake my head – which I did, and which I was doing when I woke up in my own bed.

I took a few minutes for me to realize what had happened.  Basically, I was in disbelief that I’d actually been consciously aware of my subconscious; but when I came to terms with it, I thought it was SO cool.

I still do.

Hope I can do it again soon.

TWD

Not much

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Nothing to talk about today.

I didn’t get up early (well….I did get up early in order to feed the cats), and I spent most of the day lying in bed watching football.  Atlanta lost to Houston. 

Not a good day.

A Saturday Off?

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I’ve spent a lovely day doing nothing.  Today was the first Saturday since September 3rd that I wasn’t on the road – you may recall that on the one off-weekend of the football season, I had a board meeting in Cincinnati, and last weekend (the first post-season Saturday), I drove to Greenville to help a friend move.  So I spent most of today lying on my bed watching movies.

Did take a short break from that to go to the grocery store and get some milk and bread, but once I got home and made my sandwich, I took my clothes off and scooted right back to the bed.

I must admit that the day didn’t start all that pleasantly.  I got a phone call at about 4:30 this morning.  It was a wrong number, but that wasn’t the annoying part.  See, when my phone makes unexpected noises, my female cat (Boo) loses her freaking mind and goes into full-scale attack mode against my male cat (Bo).  Neither Bo nor I really know how to deal with this, as Boo is simply batshit-crazy during these little feline seizures, so Bo did what his tiny little brain decided was the best thing to do:  he ran under the bed.  Bad move on his part, as Boo can fit under the bed, too.  So, although the phone didn’t wake me up, the screams of a full-blown cat fight going on 18 inches under my head most certainly did.

It is not an enchanting way to wake up.

Should you be wondering why Boo doesn’t do this EVERY time I get a phone call, it’s because the contacts in my phone have been assigned ring tones to which she’s become accustomed.  Since the call this morning was not from one of my contacts, it was a new and magical sound to her – which required her to go insane.

I was able to restore peace by giving the two of them their breakfast 90 minutes early.  Then I went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep until after I’d watched an episode of The Joy of Painting.  The host, Bob Ross, has the most soothing voice imaginable.

I may try to get up early tomorrow and go take some pictures somewhere.  Haven’t really done that since Betsy moved, and I miss it.  

TWD

Endings and Beginnings

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Damn.

There was a possibility that I’d be playing brass carols at the mall tonight as part of an incentive to get shoppers to dump more money into the Salvation Army’s red bucket there.  In anticipation of this, I took the tuba out of the case this morning, discovered that two valves (out of four) were pretty much completely frozen, and spent an extra 15 minutes before I left the house getting them cleaned and oiled and movable and yada yada yada.

Then I got an email at about noon informing me that our group wasn’t needed.

Just damn.  I was looking forward to learning if I still knew how to play tuba.  Maybe next week.

I think I wrote an entry in this’yere blog a year or two ago that described my general blase attitude each December.  In fact, I know I did.  Maybe I’ll put a link to it in this entry if I remember to later.  As a recap, I get incredibly unmotivated to do anything during the last 5 or 6 weeks of the year.  This year is no different.  I’ve had one project on my plate for the last week.  ONE project.  Normally, there are no less than 4 lined up and waiting.  Now it’s down to one, and my group has decided that we’re going to use the month of December mainly for cleaning up/organizing our web server and rewriting/improving older stuff that can be improved.

One project and then it’s just goofing-off for the rest of the year.

And I just cannot motivate myself to do that one project.  Oh, I take a look at it every now and then and I send emails to the person who requested it  (just to ask a few questions and let her know that I’m still thinking about it and it’s the most important thing in the world, etc.), but I’m basically just ignoring it.  I’ve got the attention span of a bowl of peanut butter these days, and even though I get to work with every intention of taking care of that one project, I end up surfing the web and editing photos and talking to other people in the office and fixing old code and before I know what’s happening, it’s 5:00 and I’m gone.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take care of that stupid one project.

Today, however, I started a new blog.  I mentioned yesterday that I was considering putting it on the tumblr.com platform.  After I took a closer look at that solution, I decided to stick with blogger.  I could’ve gone the WordPress route, I guess, or just built my own, but blogger is an old friend at this point.

At any rate, I’ll be locking down this blog within the next week or two.  If you want to continue to read it (I’ll still be updating it), drop me an email and let me know.

The new blog, which I will attempt to update regularly, is called “Frowsy Noise” and you can click on that title right there if you want to see it.  It is not associated with any of my existing email addresses at the moment.  If I’m able to lock “Stuff Nobody Reads” down then maybe I’ll move FN under my regular email at some point.  Until then, however, it’s out there all alone and it needs your support.

Go ahead.  Follow it.  Comment on it.  It’ll be fun.

TWD

first things first

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The definition of FROWSY

1: musty, stale <a frowsy smell of stale beer and stale smoke — W. S. Maugham>


2: having a slovenly or uncared-for appearance <a couple of frowsy stuffed chairs — R. M. Williams>

Had to get the definition out of the way right off the bat.  Frowsy.  It’s an interesting word, that.  Meaning both “bad smell” and “bad look.”  With that sort of adaptability, I thought it only right and proper that I should apply it to noise, which – as far as I know – has neither olfactory nor visual properties (short of looking at noise in an oscilloscope or whatever that noise-watching-scope is called, but let’s not pick at that particular bundle of nits).
If you’re reading this page on or around December 2, 2011, then there’s a good chance that you were directed here from my other blog, which will be more-or-less locked down in the near future.  It was never intended to be available to more than my family and a small circle of friends.  I was somewhat off-put when I discovered that it had been indexed by various search engines and was being accessed by a handful of folks who visited my website (The Unofficial Furman Football Page).  I was not, like, freaking out about it or anything; but, as I said, that blog was never intended to be public.  I’ll continue to update it (as always because – at least mainly because – it helps me remember what I was doing during a given year), but its public visibility will hopefully be coming to an abrupt end.  
This little electronic scratch-pad, however, is open to whomever gets bored enough to look at it.  I envision it as being a place for me to post photos, thoughts, rants, lectures, notes…generally any old smelly thing that drips out of my head.  If you’ve been reading my other blog as a way to keep up with what I’m doing, then this blog – which I shall now refer to as “FN” – should fill that informational gap for you (for example, I’m currently at work, I’m bored, and the possible red-kettle caroling gig that I was scheduled to do this evening has been cancelled).  If you’ve read the other blog more as a way to gauge my mental stability, well….FN won’t be quite so personally revealing.
Another difference between this blog and that blog is that I’d love to get some feedback (in the form of comments) on FN.  Sure, I accepted comments on the other blog, but I wouldn’t say I encouraged them.  FN is different.  The more you comment (hey, tell your friends!), the more potential there will be for me to see something to write about – and, when you get right down to it, this is really all about writing.  I like to do it.  I just don’t always know where to start.
So then.  If you’ve been following my drivel for a while, welcome to the next phase.  It will hopefully be a bit more diverse and a lot more frequently-updated than you’ve gotten used to.  If you’ve never been subjected to my literary purges, then welcome aboard.  I hope you enjoy yourself.
Just remember those two golden rules:

• The cats were here first. • If it’s in the fridge, it’s fair game.


Winding Down 2011

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So.  December 1st already.  How ’bout that?

I’ve decided to attempt to go out of 2011 in the same manner that I began it.  To wit, by posting every day for the month of December.

This publishing marathon very nearly began disastrously, as I’ve been trying for several days to get an operating system installed on my laptop, and – until about 15 minutes ago – had been completely unable to do so.  I’d go through all of the installation steps, reboot the machine to finish up, and get cryptic error messages or missing displays or (in the case of the current system that I’m using) security errors whenever I tried to launch a browser.

At least for the moment, however, I’m able to see this page long enough actually to get a post written and, one hopes, published.

I’ve also decided that, sometime this month, I’ll launch a new blog to replace this one, which was never really intended to be very public.  Google’s continual combination of various things, however (blogger.com, gmail, google+, facebook, etc) has gotten me nervous that I’ll forget to hit a check box somewhere and “Stuff Nobody Reads” will suddenly become common knowledge to about 1200 people instead of the 8 or 9 who currently know about it.

So, as I said, I’ll be starting a new blog – probably on the tumblr.com platform – and will more or less lock this one down and continue to use it as a more personal journal for myself.

I’ve yet to come up with a name for the new blog, but you can rest easy knowing that the title of it will be clever and witty and the content will be topical, hard-hitting, and generally grammatically correct.

If you have suggestions for the new title, please feel free to let me know what those suggestions are.

For right now, though, I’m just going to run a few more software updates on the laptop (I’ve settled on Fedora 12 for the OS if you’re wondering), try to get it to reboot successfully, and then go to sleep.  The year may have gone by very quickly, but this week is dragging by slower than a very slow thing.

TWD